When education insiders gathered earlier this week to hear from the author of a new book about school governance, they were also getting a glimpse into one big idea that’s reshaping local schools.

The author was David Osborne, and his new book, “Reinventing America’s Schools,” argues that city school districts should stop directly running schools, and should instead hand that power over to non-government groups like charter schools.

It’s a model that some leaders in Memphis, including those who brought Osborne to town, are giving close attention. Among them is Marcus Robinson, the leader of the Memphis Education Fund, which hosted the event with Osborne. Robinson came to Memphis a year ago from Indianapolis, one of the cities Osborne highlights as a beacon of his favored model.

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Originally called Teacher Town, last year Memphis Education Fund changed its name and adopted a new mission: to improve every aspect of local schools, not just teaching. But what efforts exactly would get the fund’s support has been unclear.

If Robinson does endorse Osborne’s vision and pushes leaders at Shelby County Schools to embrace charter schools, he and the Memphis Education Fund could find themselves on a collision course with the Shelby County Schools board.

PHOTO: Laura Faith Kebede

Stephanie Love

Currently, Shelby County’s schools chief, Dorsey Hopson, has made clear that he sees the district as competing with the charter sector, not receding to allow the sector to flourish or even existing peacefully alongside it. And throughout the presentation with Osborne, at least one school board member sitting in the audience, Stephanie Love, audibly made her displeasure known.

Robinson tried to appease Love and others in attendance who expressed skepticism about Osborne’s vision, while still backing a key requirement of it. “No matter how you do school or who is governing it, none of it works to get our kids up the ladder unless there is a high level of accountability to close a bad school,” he said.

Many aspects of schooling in Memphis puts it on the right track, according to Obsorne’s assessment. The state’s turnaround initiative, the Achievement School District, offers choice for parents, third-party operators running schools, and, at least in theory, consequences for schools that don’t deliver results. (Osborne lauded the district’s test scores, at times exaggerating their performance.) The school district has also supported an initiative to give some schools more autonomy in exchange for accountability. And a robust charter sector offers more choices for families, and deepens pressure for schools either to attract families or have to close.

But the school board and Hopson, its chosen leader, have been reluctant participants in some of those initiatives. While Hopson says he supports a portfolio district in theory, his administration has at times worked to undermine such a transition.

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A searing example came in recent robocalls to parents, encouraging them not to allow charter schools to have access to their contact information.

In his presentation, Osborne said resistance from superintendents and school boards is the biggest obstacle to revamping school districts in the way he believes will make a difference for students. He suggested that school boards actually work against letting public will influence districts’ direction.

“If we are on a school board and we’re elected, and we have thousands of employees and they all vote in school board elections at which turnout is often 10 or 15 percent, we better not get them too angry at us or we’re going to lose our jobs,” Osborne said. “Same with the superintendent.”

Robinson echoed that sentiment, saying that the cities Osborne extols had “a lot of courage” to make systemic changes and close low-performing schools. He also said that in those cities, “the agents of change [are] the school board, not the principal.”

Whether board members will be receptive to what they learn is unclear. After Obsorne’s book talk, Love defended the board as already having made unpopular decisions, such as to close nearly two dozen schools over the past five years.

If Osborne’s plan were the golden ticket, she said, schools across Memphis would be further along. But she said schools that the board does not supervise, including those run by the Achievement School District, are not held to the same standards.

“There is no real accountability across the board for all of our educational options,” Love said. “It sounded good, but it’s unrealistic.”

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“My son keeps asking ‘where am I going to school next year?’” parent Maria Koliantz told Chalkbeat last week.

Koliantz, who has two children in the Montessori program at Maybury Elementary School in Southwest Detroit, said a sense of brewing change has been affecting parents and teachers.

“I just keep trying to assure him,” she said of her son. “But … I hate that the uncertainty has affected him.”

But Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says there are no plans to move existing programs. Questioned by Koliantz at a school board community meeting Tuesday night, Vitti assured her the district would only add new programs, not close existing ones.

“We have no intention of discontinuing that program,” he said. “It’s a vehicle to recruit parents to the school system. I don’t think you’re going to see anything but expansion.”

Since his arrival in Detroit last spring, Vitti has talked about the need to give every school in the district a distinct identity, with some schools focusing on math and technology and others perhaps developing a focus on creative writing.

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Vitti revealed Tuesday morning that the district is considering eventually creating three arts schools for children who’ve been identified as gifted or talented.

New Montessori schools are also on the table, he said. “The new schools will be announced by the end of March as we work towards ensuring that every school has a identifiable and distinct program to improve performance and enrollment.”

Freestanding Montessori schools could represent a new chapter for a program that was launched in Detroit two years ago as a hybrid system, with Montessori classrooms operating next to traditional classrooms in a handful schools.

The program, which allows children to learn at their own pace in mixed-age classrooms, started in 2016 with classrooms serving pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, as well as some students in grades 1-3 at Spain, Maybury and Edison elementary schools. The program more than doubled in size in 2017, adding classrooms in the first three schools and expanding into three more — Chrysler, Palmer Park and Vernor elementary schools.

But while the current structure at the six schools has been popular with some parents, it has also created some difficulties.

The Montessori program is run by a director, Nicola Turner, who hires teachers for the program, oversees their training, and supports them as they implement the Montessori curriculum. But those teachers also work for their school principals — a dynamic that can create complications.

In some schools, there has been tension between parents and teachers affiliated with the Montessori program and those connected to traditional classrooms. Since the Montessori programs tend to have more teachers and fewer students than traditional classrooms, that’s raised issues of fairness and equity.

The current setup has also created challenges aligning the Montessori curriculum with the structure and schedules of a traditional school. In an ideal Montessori classroom, for example, students would have an uninterrupted three-hour block to work on their core lessons, but that isn’t always possible in a school where many factors determine when students can have lunch, go to recess or take art and music classes.

Freestanding Montessori schools could avoid some of those problems — and potentially offer some advantages.

“We could do after-school programs that were Montessori-specific,” said Yolanda King, who has a son in the program at Spain Elementary and a younger child she hopes to enroll next year. Special classes like art, music and gym “could be more aligned to Montessori” in a freestanding school, she said, suggesting “yoga programs and whole food programs.”

Turner, the Montessori program director, declined to comment about the possible changes but an email she sent to parents this month indicates they were fairly divided about the prospect of freestanding schools.

Nearly half — 48 percent — said they preferred keeping Montessori classrooms in their current schools while 37 percent liked the idea of a Montessori school. About 15 percent did not indicate a preference.

Dan Yowell is among parents who’ve raised concerns that freestanding schools might feel removed from the rest of the district.

“We liked the fact that [Montessori] is accessible to people all over the city,” said Yowell, whose son is in the program at Spain.

A freestanding Montessori school “has a feeling that it’s more exclusive,” Yowell said. “I don’t want it to be perceived as something that only certain people can access.”

Spain, in Detroit’s midtown neighborhood, is one of two schools with Montessori classrooms that has enough space to dramatically expand the program. The other one is the Palmer Park Academy, which is in northwest Detroit.

As Mayor Bill de Blasio prepares to choose a new leader for the nation’s largest school system, no one is watching that decision more closely than Mark Treyger.

Treyger, a former history teacher who was recently named chairman of the city council’s education committee, will be responsible for holding the new schools chief accountable. In that role, the Brooklyn Democrat plans to support many of the de Blasio initiatives that the next chancellor will carry out — from expanded preschool to more social services in schools.

But Treyger also has some tough questions for the mayor and his yet-to-be-named schools chief. How do they plan to reduce school segregation? What is the mayor’s overarching vision for the school system? And must he choose the chancellor behind closed doors?

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“I do believe that the best decisions are the ones where you involve critical stakeholders,” Treyger told Chalkbeat in a recent interview.

Below are some of the education issues that Treyger said he’ll be paying close attention to as de Blasio prepares to hand the reins of the school system over to a new chancellor.

1. What’s the larger vision for the school system?

Free pre-K has been de Blasio’s signature education accomplishment, but he’s also rolled out an assortment of lesser-known initiatives.

Many of them fall under the banner of “Equity and Excellence for All,” including efforts to make Advanced Placement classes available to all high-school students by 2021 and computer-science courses available to all students by 2025. Some critics have pointed out that many of those programs won’t be fully phased in until after de Blasio leaves. Others — including Treyger — wonder what they all add up to.

“It’s been a commendable beginning,” he said. “But I’m looking for a larger vision.”

On a practical level, Treyger also questioned whether the education department has laid the groundwork to roll out some of those initiatives. He said will work to make sure all schools have the infrastructure they need, such as reliable internet service and appropriate technology, to make sure they can offer courses like computer science.

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“How can you have a conversation about computers,” he said, “when the lights don’t even work?”

2. Why not make the chancellor search public?

De Blasio has insisted that he won’t “crowdsource” the search for a new schools chief — despite calls for public input from a chorus of parents and experts.

Treyger thinks a compromise is possible: Let the mayor choose chancellor candidates, but then give the city council the power to vet the candidates during public hearings before signing off on the mayor’s pick.

“I believe that we should be open to moving towards a process where the city council has advise-and-consent power,” he said, adding that the legislature should consider altering the mayoral control law next year to give city lawmakers that power.

3. How serious is this administration about tackling school segregation?

School integration was not on de Blasio’s agenda when he came into office.

But after a grassroots movement of parents and educators called on the mayor to address the school system’s severe racial and socioeconomic segregation, he took some small steps in that direction. The education department released a “school diversity” plan last year, and has launched an integration-aimed admissions program at a few dozen schools and in one Manhattan district.

However, Treyger thinks the city can and must do more — including aligning school enrollment, zoning, and housing policies to work towards the same goal of integration.

“If we’re serious about addressing [segregation], we have to know the difference between managing the problem and actually solving it,” he said. “I think that we’ve seen, thus far, more management than actually solving.”

4. What’s next for the Renewal program?

The mayor’s $582 million “Renewal” program for struggling schools is at a crossroads.

De Blasio made a big bet that his administration could quickly rehabilitate 94 low-performing schools by giving them extra social services and academic support. But the program has achieved mixed results, and now the education department is planning to shutter eight Renewal schools next year — part of the largest round of school closures under de Blasio.

Treyger’s first oversight hearing as education chairman, set for next week, will focus on the program. He has spent the last few weeks visiting schools in the program and says he wants to understand what the city’s future plans are for supporting those schools. And he wants to be sure that if struggling schools improve enough to leave the program, their extra support won’t suddenly be cut. (The education department has committed to maintaining the full budget allocation they receive through the city’s funding formula and extra social services for the 21 schools that are improving enough to leave the program.)

“We will not be happy,” he said, “if we learn that a school that is improving or turning things around — that its reward is a funding cut.”